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Diffstat (limited to 'community/gsoc/project_ideas/unionfs_boot.mdwn')
| -rw-r--r-- | community/gsoc/project_ideas/unionfs_boot.mdwn | 45 |
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 45 deletions
diff --git a/community/gsoc/project_ideas/unionfs_boot.mdwn b/community/gsoc/project_ideas/unionfs_boot.mdwn deleted file mode 100644 index d9f1a9e1..00000000 --- a/community/gsoc/project_ideas/unionfs_boot.mdwn +++ /dev/null @@ -1,45 +0,0 @@ -[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2008, 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc."]] - -[[!meta license="""[[!toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[!toggleable -id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this -document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or -any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant -Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license -is included in the section entitled -[[GNU Free Documentation License|/fdl]]."]]"""]] - -[[!meta title="Allow Using unionfs Early at Boot"]] - -In [[UNIX]] systems, traditionally most software is installed in a common directory -hierarchy, where files from various packages live beside each other, grouped by -function: user-invokable executables in `/bin`, system-wide configuration files -in `/etc`, architecture specific static files in `/lib`, variable data in -`/var`, and so on. To allow clean installation, deinstallation, and upgrade of -software packages, GNU/Linux distributions usually come with a package manager, -which keeps track of all files upon installation/removal in some kind of -central database. - -An alternative approach is the one implemented by GNU Stow: each package is -actually installed in a private directory tree. The actual standard directory -structure is then created by collecting the individual files from all the -packages, and presenting them in the common `/bin`, `/lib`, etc. locations. - -While the normal Stow package (for traditional UNIX systems) uses symlinks to -the actual files, updated on installation/deinstallation events, the Hurd -[[hurd/translator]] mechanism allows a much more elegant solution: -[[hurd/translator/stowfs]] (which is actually a special mode of -[[hurd/translator/unionfs]]) creates virtual directories on the fly, composed -of all the files from the individual package directories. - -The problem with this approach is that unionfs presently can be launched only -once the system is booted up, meaning the virtual directories are not available -at boot time. But the boot process itself already needs access to files from -various packages. So to make this design actually usable, it is necessary to -come up with a way to launch unionfs very early at boot time, along with the -root filesystem. - -Completing this task will require gaining a very good understanding of the Hurd -boot process and other parts of the design. It requires some design skills -also to come up with a working mechanism. - -Possible mentors: Carl Fredrik Hammar (cfhammar) |